


isn't that what friends are for (even if we could be more?)

by outlawslikeus



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alcohol, Drunkenness, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24020011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outlawslikeus/pseuds/outlawslikeus
Summary: During his sophomore year of college, Evan gets a call at three in the morning from someone he never thought he'd hear from again.
Relationships: Evan Hansen & Jared Kleinman, Evan Hansen/Jared Kleinman (implied)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 85





	isn't that what friends are for (even if we could be more?)

**Author's Note:**

> (Altered) title and entire fic concept from [Partners In Crime by FINNEAS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34rDChPGvqc).
> 
> This ended up being quite a bit longer than I originally intended (I thought it'd be 2k max, haha). It's been mostly edited but let me know if you catch any mistakes!

The host looks down at the stranger who is passed out on her floor, tucked away between the side of the couch and the wall, face down in a damp spot of what is probably his own vomit and alcohol. No wonder no one has noticed him here before. He’s almost completely hidden from view unless you were standing right on top of him. Unfortunately for this guy, she’s not having anyone stay here. She has shit to do in the morning. Nudging the side of the guy none too gently with her foot, she sighs.

“What the hell do we do with this guy?” she nudges him again, while calling out to her roommate, who is still throwing red solo cups and beer bottles into a trash bag.

“Wake him up. See if he’s got a friend who can come get him,” she replies without even looking up.

She nudges at the guy one last time, not at all hopeful. No response. With another sigh, she leans down and starts to shake his shoulder.

“Dude. Wake up. You can’t stay here.”

It takes a few moments of continuous shaking, but the guy finally shifts underneath her hand and makes a small groan.

“Party’s over, man. Do you have a friend who can come get you?”

An unintelligible noise that she’s pretty sure is definitely not words gets made into the carpet beneath him.

“You gotta speak up,” she says, exasperated.

A louder groan gets made and she’s about to ask again, before the stranger finally croaks out something in English.

“Evan.”

“Evan? Who’s Evan?” she asks, but it’s useless. The guy has passed out again.

Fuck. She’s never hosting another party again. With the longest suffering sigh, she begins to grope at his pockets until she pulls out what she’s looking for.

His phone isn’t dead, thank God. She grabs his limp hand, which is uncomfortably sticky, and puts it over the fingerprint sensor on the back, hoping.

She’s a fucking genius, because it unlocks. Biometrics are a godsend.

She takes a moment to navigate to his contacts application on this unfamiliar phone and scrolls down until she hits _E_. It doesn’t take very long because this guy does not have many contacts saved.

 _Evan Hansen_ is the only entry under _Evan_ (it’s the only entry under _E_ at all, in fact). She clicks the call button without a second of hesitation.

The phone rings for so long she thinks it’s going to go to voicemail and she’s going to have to try to get another person out of the guy, but then at the last moment, the call is picked up.

“Jared?” comes a voice through the tinny speakers.

“Your friend needs someone to come pick him up. He’s pretty much blackout on my floor. I’ll text you the address. Be here in 20 minutes or else we’re leaving him on the porch.” She hangs up, not wanting to hear any argument.

She opens up the text chain between the stranger— _Jared_ —apparently, and _Evan Hansen_ , and she doesn’t mean to snoop, but the last messages between them appear on the screen as she’s typing. They’re from almost three years ago at this point, none of which are too friendly. Certainly not a person she would call to pick her up if that was her last conversation with them, but it’s not her problem. Whoever this guy is and whatever his deal is with _Evan_ , they can sort it out somewhere that isn’t her house.

She sends off the text and shoves the phone back into the guy’s pocket before going to help her roommate with the cleanup. Fifteen minutes pass by quickly, before she hears a knock on her front door.

“It’s unlocked,” she calls out.

The door opens and a nervous looking guy who must be Evan steps into her house, warily, clearly judging the scene around him.

“Here’s your guy,” she says, tilting her head towards the corner behind where Jared lays on the floor.

Evan’s face is an unreadable neutral as he looks down to the mess that is laying there. He makes his way over, stepping over a puddle of unidentified liquid and several bottles she hasn’t gotten around to yet on the way.

He leans down and shakes Jared, much gentler than she did earlier. He must have come back close to consciousness sometime in the last fifteen minutes, because he wakes back up almost immediately. Blinking and groggy, he looks up to see who has awakened him.

“Evan? What’re you doing here?” he slurs.

“Your friend called me," he says, tilting his head to gesture to her. "Come on, I’m here to take you home.”

Jared stares up at him for a few more moments, blinking slowly, either considering his options or maybe just taking that long for the words to register in his alcohol soaked brain. Whatever it is, after just a bit too long, he finally reaches out his hand to Evan, the universal motion for signaling that he wants to be helped up.

Evan stares back at the hand for what is also just a moment too long, before taking it and helping Jared to his feet. She rolls her eyes, watching them. Whatever it is that happened between them, they seriously need to get their shit together.

She watches as Evan slings Jared’s arm across his shoulder and practically carries him towards the door. Before he leaves, he turns back to look at her.

“Thank you for calling me,” he says, sincerely, before continuing out of her house.

It must be the earnestness in his voice and the strange history between the two that’s palpable to even her, because she calls out “anytime” after them and means it.

* * *

Evan heaves a barely coherent Jared into the passenger seat of his car and hands him a plastic grocery bag he had sitting in the trunk. It looks like all the vomit in him is currently back on the floor inside the house, his clothes and face, and in his hair, but he’s not going to risk it.

He starts up the engine and turns to Jared.

“Where are we going?”

“M’ ‘partmnet,” he says, unhelpfully.

“And where is that?” he asks, patiently.

Jared is silent for a long moment, probably trying to remember a new address through a booze-addled mind. As he waits, he reaches over to buckle Jared’s seatbelt for him, since he doubts Jared’s going to remember to do so or physically be able to maneuver the buckle in himself. Finally, he mumbles out an address for Evan to key into his phone GPS, and they begin to drive.

The car is silent and dark, the only noise or illumination coming from the occasional instruction from his phone and street light. Neither of them speak for a long while, until he stops at a red light and looks over at Jared, thinking of all the times back in high school that he has been the one to drive him places. Jared must realize this too, because as Evan stares over, Jared breaks their silence.

“Since when did you drive?”

“It’s been three years, things change.”

Jared makes a small, contemplative noise, but says nothing in return.

The light turns green and Evan switches his gaze back on the road. It’s another few moments of silence before Jared makes another noise, and he’s about to tell him that if he’s going to speak, it better be comprehensible, because it just sounds like he’s making grunts. But when he looks over, Jared has fallen back asleep and is snoring in the passenger seat, head lolling onto his shoulder. Evan sighs, and the rest of the drive is filled with the soft sounds of snores and faint GPS instructions. If he slows down a bit to revel in the peace and calmness of being driving at night with quiet company, then no one else is awake to mention it.

Evan finally arrives at the apartment complex Jared lives at. Off-campus housing, which might explain why they haven’t truly run into each other, despite having attended the same college for over a year now.

At the end of senior year, every student had received a packet that detailed the schools everyone in their graduating class would be attending in the fall. Evan had been surprised to read that Jared would be attending their state school. He had always talked about wanting to go to school out west and get a fancy tech internship in Silicon Valley. But here he is, attending the same state school Evan is. It’s by no means a bad school, but it’s never been his dream. He wonders what changed.

He parks by a street light and sits there for a moment, just studying Jared’s face. It’s certainly not in the best condition. His cheek is smudged with vomit and the deep bags under his eyes suggest that he probably makes a habit of staying up until—he checks his watch— _3:44 AM_. Underneath the mess, it’s the same face, albeit a bit older, with the last of the baby fat from his cheeks gone. He wears new glasses and his hair has grown out a bit. They look nice on him, he notes. As he stares, he’s shaken out of his reverie when Jared frowns in his sleep and lets out another quiet snore.

Evan shakes him awake again.

“Come on, we’re here.”

This time, Jared gets out of the car on his own power and when Evan asks which apartment is, he simply takes Evan by the hand and pulls him along. He tries not to think anything of it, after all, Jared is pretty wasted right now, and drunk people tend to be more touchy than normal. He’s always been a tactile person, too, from pats on the shoulder in high school to when they would hug frequently in middle school, before Jared had decided it wasn’t cool to hug his male best friend that often.

Luckily, Jared seems to live on the first floor so they don’t have to traverse any stairs before they’re outside of a door and he’s letting go of his hand to fish through his pockets until he procures a keychain. He hands it to Evan by one of the keys and steps aside, which he takes as a prompt to open the door for them, which is probably smart since he’s not sure how long they would be stuck out here if Jared were to try to put a key into a keyhole right now.

The apartment is completely dark when they enter and Evan fumbles blindly at the wall until he finds what he’s looking for and light illuminates the room. He takes in the room as quickly as he can. It’s a small place and definitely looks like a one-person apartment. It’s a lot cleaner than he would have expected it to be, considering it looks like Jared is the only one that lives here. Jared passes where he stands in the living room and opens a door at the other side of the room, presumably the door to his bedroom and disappears in. Evan follows him in and finds him sitting on the edge of his bed, hunched in on himself.

“No. Get up. You need to take a shower first. You’re going to get vomit on your sheets if you sleep in it right now.”

Jared groans, but he doesn’t flop over, which is more than he expected. Evan offers up his hand, hoping it’ll entice him to get up. It must work, because soon he’s pulling Jared off the bed and into the bathroom attached to his room. He sits Jared on the toilet as he turns on the bath faucet and waits for the water to run hot. As he waits, he unlaces Jared’s shoes and pulls them off. Next are his socks, which is a lot harder than he expects, mainly because Jared keeps jerking his feet whenever Evan touches his ankle.

“Hold still, will you?” he asks, while using one hand to pin Jared’s leg down and the other to pull off a sock.

Jared stops struggling. “Sorry. It tickles.”

It’s just his luck that the first time he sees his old friend in years, he has to take care of him, blackout drunk. He pulls off the other sock while Jared is still.

“Just,” he sighs. “Just take off your clothes,” he says, knowing he’s going to regret his words even before he says them.

“Well, if you wanted my pants,” he says, words coming out slow and slurred, “I mean get in—to get in my pants so bad—badly.” Jared gives up and begins to laugh at himself. Evan starts to laugh, too, because Jared’s laughter has always been contagious, and soon they’re both laughing hard enough at the ridiculousness of it all that Jared has fallen to the floor and Evan isn’t far behind.

When their laughter finally abates, Evan helps Jared back onto his feet.

“Alright,” he says, still smiling. “Let’s get you cleaned up so we can both go to sleep.”

Evan takes Jared’s glasses off his face, much to his objection, and sets them down on the bathroom counter, before helping him pull off his button up. They’re long sleeved, as it’s the middle of winter, and they get stuck on his arm for a few moments, which sends him into another fit of laughter. By the time Jared has gotten his button up and his t-shirt off, Evan has unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them down to his mid thighs. Jared grabs Evan by the arm to steady himself as he childishly uses one foot to hold down the cuff of his jeans and pulls his other leg out of his pants, in a shocking display of balance for one as drunk as he is.

Evan is suddenly very aware of the fact that Jared is in just his underwear, hanging onto him like he’s a lifeline, and that he needs to be anywhere else but here.

“I’m—I’m going to uh—” he remembers the cup on Jared’s sink that had been next to the glasses and comes up with his excuse. “I’m going to get you some water,” and he grabs the cup as he rushes out of the bathroom, not waiting for a response.

As he escapes back out to the main room, he can feel his face heat up and he knows he’s probably way too red right now. He stands at the kitchen counter for a few moments and puts his face in his hands. His plans for the night certainly hadn’t involved getting woken up at three in the morning by a phone call from _Jared Kleinman_ of all people.

They go to the same school, so he heard of him, sometimes. A friend of a friend of a friend. A passing by on the street, both of them looking the other way the moment they notice the other. A screen flashing a photo of him smiling with three other people, with the caption “ _Third Place at ICPC Northeast NA Regional Contest_ ,” all of them with medals around their necks, when Evan had gone into Jared’s department’s building, once. He had stood, staring at the screen and at Jared’s smiling face, until it changed and displayed the next slide. He had forced his feet to move, instead of waiting for the display to loop back around to Jared’s face again. Little reminders that Jared was around, like a flicker on the periphery of his vision, but nothing as bold as a phone call in the middle of the night from a dead name.

He comes out of his thoughts when he hears the water stop from the other room. He fills up the cup and downs it himself before filling it up again for Jared.

Evan heads back into the bedroom and sets down the cup on the bedside table. He takes the time to take in the room. It’s also similarly sparse, like the living room, but small pieces of Jared’s personality shine through in here. His desk has two monitors. One of them is still on and on a paused video game. On the wall, behind his bed, he recognizes a poster from a band Jared used to play a lot of music from, but that seems to be it for decorations. The room is also weirdly clean, though he’s starting to suspect that it’s just because Jared doesn’t seem to have a lot of personal items with him in this apartment.

He comes to a dresser and begins rummaging through Jared’s drawers, searching for suitable pajamas. He finds a ratty pair of sweatpants he recognizes, which speaks to how old they are, and grabs a pair of boxers and a t-shirt off a hanger before heading back into the bathroom.

“I’m gonna leave some clothes for you to change into on the toilet seat, okay?”

There’s no response from the tub.

“Jared?” he calls out, but there’s still no noise.

He’s heard of people drowning in bathtubs when drunk, and as silly as it sounds, he’s not about to risk it happening before he and Jared can finally get a proper conversation in. He kicks the side of the tub, and he breathes a sigh of relief when he hears a splash and a yelp come from inside.

“Don’t worry, ‘m not gonna fall asleep ‘n ya,” comes the voice of someone who was definitely just asleep.

“That’s not what I was worried about. I left some clothes for you out here for when you’re done,” he says, and he’s walking back out to the bedroom when behind him comes a voice.

“Wait,” he calls after him. “Sit with me,” he asks, the request hanging in the air between them. “Please,” he adds on, and Evan might be mistaken, but he thinks he hears a waver in Jared’s voice as he asks.

His feet find themselves walking back in before he even makes the conscious decision to, and he’s sitting down with his back against the side of the tub. It’s quiet for a long moment more before he hears the shower curtain get pulled back from behind him. Beside him, Jared puts an arm on the side of the tub and rests his chin on it.

“‘m sorry,” he mumbles, words muffled by his head placement and quiet enough that he almost doesn’t hear it. Louder this time, he says “I’m sorry about all—” he cuts off, his brain not properly able to articulate exactly what it is he’s sorry for. Instead, he makes a frustrated noise and gestures with the hand he’s not laying on to the space between them. “—all the everything,” he finishes lamely, clearly hoping Evan understands. And he does. He’s had a lot of time to think about what went down their senior year. However, they’re not about to have this conversation now, at ass-o’clock in the morning and one of them still too drunk to form full sentences.

“I know, but I don’t think you’re going to remember anything we talk about now in the morning, so we’ll talk about this later, okay? For now, let's just get you in bed,” he says, reassuringly. He pauses for a moment, before adding, quieter, “For what it's worth, I’m sorry, too.”

Out of the corner of his vision, he sees Jared nod, apparently content with his answer. They sit there for far longer than they should at such a late hour, or early at this point. It’s only when the water goes cold that Jared finally stands up, indicating he’s about to get out. Evan tells him he’ll wait for him in the bedroom, staunchly ignoring the implications of his words, before walking out and closing the door behind him. He sits on the edge of Jared’s bed and waits, checking his phone in the meantime.

A few minutes pass before the door opens again and Jared appears in the doorway, dressed in his pajamas and with a towel around his neck. Evan doesn’t know what it is about threadbare sweatpants and graphic t-shirts, but his heart stutters in his chest. He must have been staring for longer than he thought, because Jared catches on.

“Like what you see?” he says, jokingly.

And it’s the combination of tiredness, the events of the night, and the fact that there’s no way Jared will remember this in the morning, that lets what he says next slip out.

“Yeah,” he swallows. “Yeah I do.”

Jared looks taken aback for a moment, trying to parse out if he’s being serious or not, before his expression turns sour.

“Alright, well that’s not funny anymore. You didn’t have to make fun of me.”

“I wasn’t making fun of you,” he says, ignoring the possible meanings of what Jared just said. He still seems pretty drunk, even if it’s been almost an hour and a half since they left the house, and he probably doesn’t know what he’s saying, Evan rationalizes. He doesn’t give Jared time to respond, as he holds out the cup of water he had filled up earlier. “Drink, it’ll help with your hangover in the morning.”

Jared frowns and opens his mouth, as if he were about to say something. He must decide against it in the end, but he takes the cup. Letting the towel around his neck drop down to the floor, he sits down beside Evan on the edge of his bed, close enough that their thighs brush against each other. He downs the water in a few short gulps, before falling back on his bed and sighing.

“It’s been a night, hasn’t it?” he says, sounding strangely coherent and melancholic.

Evan lets himself fall back next to Jared, before letting out a noise of agreement. He turns his head to look at Jared and finds him staring back, a strangely solemn look on his face. Their faces are a lot closer than he expected, only a few inches apart. A stray thought crosses his mind of “ _you could lean in and—_ ” before he shuts that down quickly. He’s gotten into too much trouble before, acting on impulses, and he doesn’t think Jared will appreciate it, either. Instead, he focuses on the eyes in front of him. The only illumination in the room is coming from the bathroom light that’s still left on, and in that dim light, he can just make out the section of brown in one of Jared’s eyes. He’s transfixed, for a few moments, wondering what’s going on behind them, what Jared is thinking of and if he feels the strange intensity between them, too. Almost a full minute passes by his count, before Jared is the one to break their eye contact and averts his gaze.

“I’m going to sleep now,” he says, unceremoniously and a bit too loudly, and wriggles around until he’s mostly underneath his covers, before he’s out like a light. Evan’s a bit envious. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to fall asleep for another hour, with the weird energy that has settled into his bones from moments before. 

Evan gets up and pulls at the blanket a bit so Jared is fully covered. He watches Jared for a moment more, before going back out to the living room, considering his options. In the end, it boils down to him sleeping on the futon, as he can’t leave without leaving the door unlocked or taking Jared’s keys with him, neither of which seem like the best idea. 

As he takes another look at the futon, he recognizes it to be the same one from Jared’s basement. He smiles at the familiar piece of furniture. He’s passed out on it a fair number of times throughout middle and high school, so he knows how to lay on it to avoid the springs that would otherwise dig into his back.

He sits down on the side that’s a bit softer and checks his phone. He goes back to his text messages and it’s still open on his thread with Jared. Staring at their last messages, he sighs at the timestamp telling him they’re from almost three years ago. 

The pain of their fallout had been eclipsed by the rest of The Connor Project and related events at the time, but he found that as his life began to move on, the thing that stuck with him through everything that happened his senior year was the absence of Jared. It makes sense, he supposes. They had been friends since longer than he could remember. There was never a time in his life that Jared hadn’t been part of in some way. His mother had told him that she and the Kleinmans had taken turns babysitting him and Jared for the night whenever one parent wanted a break, and they had gone to the same schools together, growing up, even if they hadn’t always been in the same classes. The Connor Project had come and gone in such a short time period that he never truly got used to the idea of it. Even now, when he sometimes gets reminders of it on social media, he feels disconnected from the entire thing. In retrospect, it’s kind of easy to see that he took Jared’s presence in his life as a given, and his abrupt absence may not have been the most pressing issue at the time, but in the long run, it’s the one he notices the most.

He shuts his phone off, not wanting reminders of that time. It’s in the past, and he knows he’s changed and grown enough since then, and hopes that Jared has, too. As he settles down for the night on the springy futon and soft throw blanket with the obnoxious color and logo of their college on it, he can’t help but feel that no matter what happens tomorrow, he and Jared will be alright, in the end.

* * *

Jared wakes up in his own bed to noises in his living room, which is strange for several reasons, first of which being he has no memory of getting home last night, secondly, because he definitely lives alone, and thirdly, because he was sure he had gone out to a party last night with the intention of drinking himself into a coma. Not for a lack of trying, though, says his pounding headache.

He decides that if it’s a murderer who’s broken into his home, then he’ll accept his fate, considering he feels like death already.

Eventually, he musters the strength to open his eyes, which is definitely a mistake because the blinds are open in his room and the bright sunlight of what is probably early afternoon is streaming in. He jerks his head to the side, trying to block out the sunlight, but that’s his second mistake, because the sudden motion brings on a bout of nausea in him, and suddenly he’s racing for his toilet.

A few miserable moments later, he’s emptied whatever poison remained in his stomach out into the toilet. Or, at least, most of it got in the toilet. He grimaces at the unholy taste of morning breath and vomit in his mouth. Reaching blindly, he goes to grab the cup he usually keeps by his bathroom sink, but it’s not there. He does find his glasses, instead, so he shoves them on and decides it’s time to venture into the kitchen. He’ll risk a murdering to get the taste out of his mouth. 

He listens at his bedroom door for a moment and can hear a person moving throughout his kitchen from the other side. He doesn’t recall hooking up with anyone last night, but then again he doesn’t recall much of anything at all after his sixth shot in a row. He’s reassured by the fact that he’s fully dressed and in his own clothes, even if it isn’t what he was wearing the night before.

As he opens his bedroom door, he can smell food being cooked, which means he’s definitely going to kiss whatever godsend is in his kitchen right now. 

What he doesn’t expect to find is Evan Hansen, banging around in his kitchen. 

Evan looks up, hearing the door open.

“Morning,” he says, like it’s the most natural thing that he’s in Jared’s kitchen after not having talked to him for three years. “How much do you remember from last night?”

He considers the night before for a few moments, wracking his mind to try to remember. After a long while, he says the only thing he can recall.

“I think I took a shower.”

Evan laughs at this. “Yeah, we got you into a shower. You had puke all over your clothes and in your hair.”

“So what happened before that? I mean, I can probably guess but I want to hear it from you.”

“I got a call at three in the morning from you. When I picked up some lady threatened to leave you on her porch for the night if I didn’t come get you. Wasn’t about to let you sleep out there all night, so I brought you back.”

“Thanks, Evan. You didn’t have to, especially after…” he trails off, not sure how to put their whole dramatic falling out and involvement in criminal activity into tactful words.

“Don’t mention it.”

Well, he'll take that, because at this moment, he wouldn’t care if it was Connor Murphy standing in his kitchen; he needs to get something to help with the headache in him and the taste of vomit out of his mouth. He shuffles past Evan to get to a cupboard, rummaging through it for a few moments, before procuring a bottle of aspirin. Finding his missing cup sitting on the counter, he fills it up with more water, before downing two of the aspirin. He makes a beeline for the futon he assumes Evan spent the night on and wraps himself in his throw blanket, letting himself fall on his side. Laying there, he tries to rationalize how he ended up in this situation.

They’re quiet until Evan walks over and presents a plate of food to him. “You need to go grocery shopping,” he says, when he hands it over.

Evan sits down on the futon beside him as he pulls himself back into a sitting position and begins to eat, ravenously. He doesn’t make a habit out of getting so shitfaced he doesn’t remember the night before, but experience from previous times he’s been hungover tells him that food always helps.

When he’s done a short while later, he sets the plate on the table.

He doesn’t even know where to begin, with the expanse of history between them, so he starts with an explanation for the previous night.

“I got broken up with,” he says, which he realizes only a few moments after he’s said it that it was not nearly an adequate enough explanation. He’s about to start talking again when Evan begins to speak.

“Sorry to hear that,” he says, and after an extraordinarily long pause, he tacks on weakly, “women, right?”

He gives Evan a strange look, trying to decipher what the hell that even meant, before deciding to move on.

He considers letting the other part slide, too, but he remembers how many convoluted lies and other unspoken truths between them lay in the past and he doesn’t want to start this possible new beginning off with another lie, even just one of omission.

“It was a guy, actually,” he says.

“Oh,” Evan says, faintly.

He doesn’t wait for Evan to say more this time because he doesn’t know what he’ll do if what Evan says next isn’t positive, so he continues on.

“It was over a month ago, but I guess I didn’t really…” he trails off, trying to find a way to say this without sounding like he should be hospitalized for self-medicating with alcohol and staring at his empty plate as though it would give him the words he needed. “… deal with it until yesterday,” he finishes, wincing. “It was finals and we were always practicing for the contest back then so I was too busy with everything, and by the time it all settled down it was just… in the past,” he justifies, mostly for himself. “I don’t do this regularly,” he says, needing Evan to know his life isn’t a complete disaster, even if it feels like one currently.

Evan is silent for a few moments before he asks, “can I ask why he broke up with you?”

He lets out a snort that turns into a long sigh, continuing to stare at anything in the room that isn’t Evan. “He said I had, quote, the emotional maturity of a middle schooler,” he admits, before adding on, “and an insurmountable fear of vulnerability, endquote,” he says in a mocking voice. He tries to laugh the last bit off as a joke but Evan doesn’t join in, nor does he say anything to disagree. In his heart of hearts, he knows that everything he said was right. Hell, he hasn’t even made eye contact with Evan once during this entire conversation.

Needing to fill the silence, he switches tracks, trying to get Evan to talk. “Why’d I call you?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me that, actually. The host of the party didn’t tell me much of anything.”

Great, it’s back on him. Jared can’t be sure of anything that happened last night, but if he had to bet, with his inhibitions released, he had gotten contemplative and regretful of his past and when asked for a friend, his mind had automatically supplied _Evan_.

He opens his mouth, fully intending to speak, but no words come out. They run through his head, the ones he’s thought of so many times, but he just can’t bring himself to say them. “For a long time,” he starts, and now that he has, he can’t back out. He does the scariest thing he’s ever done in his life, and he admits. “You were always the one I knew I could call if I was in trouble,” he finally answers. “I guess I forgot I no longer could.” He stares at the frayed edge of his sweatpants’ ankle and studies the loose threads hanging.

“I still showed up, didn’t I?” Evan says.

He finally turns to look at Evan. “Yeah. Yeah, you did,” and the smile that’s on his face as he talks comes to him completely unconsciously.

He and Evan have always been overly empathetic with each other, because Evan immediately smiles back and replies, “you were mine, too. The person I called, I mean.”

“I know.” The fact that it had turned into _only_ calling when he was in trouble hangs in the air.

They’re quiet for a moment, both thinking back to when they had been the other’s safety, before Evan starts up again. “You probably don’t remember it, but last night you apologized for, and I quote ‘all the everything.’”

He lets out a laugh at this, but it quickly dies in his throat. He’s worried now. He’s wondering what else he might have said when he was uninhibited and thinking of Evan. It used to take an awful lot of self control to stop himself from reaching out and taking Evan’s hand when it rested on the center console of his car. An awful lot of self control to stop himself from leaning into Evan’s side as they sat on a couch together when they watched movies. An awful lot of self control to not give himself away, and even if it’s been years, he’s not very much over Evan as he would have hoped he was.

“Did I say anything else important?” he asks, both needing to know the answer and hoping it never comes at the same time.

“No, nothing at all,” Evan says, though Jared thinks it comes out a bit too quickly.

“You know you don’t have to lie to me, right?”

“No, I know. I was telling the truth. You didn’t say anything important after that.”

He gives Evan a long stare, before eventually deciding to take the words at face value. He does want to finally apologize and more eloquently that he apparently did last night, so he’s not going to linger on this if Evan doesn’t want to tell him.

“I was telling the truth too, last night. I _am_ sorry about it all. About how I treated you, when we were in high school. I should’ve just told you we were actually friends instead of the stupid family friends joke every time. And I’m sorry about never noticing how bad it got, leading up to senior year. I should’ve—”

“—that wasn’t your fault,” Evan interrupts. “I was hiding it from everyone, not just you. Even my mom didn’t know.”

“Still, I should’ve said something, should’ve reached out, should’ve done _anything_ , when the letter was released. You had been my best friend, even if I never said it at the time.”

Evan smiles as he says that last part, and Jared feels bad for never having said it before. He’ll never be sorry enough for all the times he knew he made Evan feel terrible when he played off their friendship, and he hopes that he’ll have the chance to make it up to him starting now.

“I forgive you. It’s not like we were the closest of friends when the letter came out,” Evan says with a small, sad laugh. “I never expected you to say anything. And I said it last night, but I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry,” he says, voice cracking, “for dragging you into the whole Connor Project mess and getting you involved in all the lies. It had nothing to do with you and you could have gotten in so much trouble, but yet you helped me anyways and I never thanked you for that. So, thank you,” he tacks on, awkwardly.

Jared can hear his speech starting to get faster. It had been mostly level throughout their conversation, but now he’s starting to veer into the telltale Evan signs of his anxiety spiking. He can see Evan play with his shirt hem and compulsively pull it down as he speaks.

“And I’m sorry about our last… conversation, too,” Evan continues. “I shouldn’t have taken your help for granted and I shouldn’t have said what I said. You were right to be angry at me, I _was_ an asshole, and I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to forgive me,” he says, words now coming out too quickly between sharp breaths, “but I’m sorry, too, and I just need you to know that.”

Evan moves in closer and then his arms are wrapped tightly around him and Jared can feel his heart stutter in his chest for just a moment. He’s frozen, for just a half of a second, before he’s bringing his own arms up and wrapping them around Evan’s back, one of his hands stroking calmingly.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he hears a wavering voice, whispering into his ear.

Jared feels something in his chest tighten at the waver. “It’s okay, I forgive you,” he whispers into Evan’s ear, reflexively. “You’re okay,” he says, hoping it’ll help calm him down. It’s not until the words are out of his mouth that he realizes it’s true. He had been bitter and angry for so long after what had happened that the notion of forgiving Evan had never come to him. He had assumed that resentfulness would be his default in relation to Evan for forever. And then it wasn’t. He thinks although he hadn’t forgiven Evan before this conversation, the sharpness of the hurt had dulled enough after their years of distance that he was able to accept Evan’s apology in the present.

They stay like that for several minutes, until Jared can feel Evan’s chest against his slow in its heaving and the hot breath on his shoulder coming less frequently. However, the grip Evan has around him doesn’t relax. If anything, it seems to get tighter. He can feel Evan’s heartbeat against his chest, fast and strong, and he wonders if Evan can feel his, too. He hopes not, since it might give him away, as his heart has no reason to be beating as fast as it is. He tightens his own grip around Evan in return, neither of them making any indication to break apart.

It’s simultaneously a tentative and strong start to the second life of their friendship, both of them still ruminating on past hurts even as they hold the other in their arms, but optimistic that they can be better to each other this time.

**Author's Note:**

> *beats dialogue with a stick*
> 
> Unbetad, so let me know about any spelling/grammar mistakes. Kudos, comments, concrit, feedback, anything you dis/liked, etcetera are appreciated. Drop your favorite line or something in the comments.
> 
> Follow me at [outlawslikeus](https://outlawslikeus.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


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